Tag: BBC

One of my most popular blog posts has been a piece I wrote in early 2017 about the award winning, view rating smasher, exotic-come-bumbling British crime drama Death in Paradise. In that piece I looked at how its diverse representation of mixed gender and strong well written BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) characters, alongside wonderful plotting and original crime ideas made the series a real hit, and one to watch for fans of crime fiction.

The new team

But, this was at the end of season 5, and I am sad to say that since then and particularly with the most recent series, everything that I praised about this programme has been totally reversed. And it is unbelievably shocking.

Let’s start with Race. Each episode has the main cast of the Saint Marie police force, and then the selection of characters who will be involved in the murder investigation. In this cast of suspects is where the series used to take BAME representation and gender balance very seriously, most importantly portraying BAME characters as normal people, and not making them stereotypes of their race or giving them stories that were only about race and nothing else. It was bold and exciting writing, bringing a diverse cast into millions of people’s homes each week. Even winning them awards for diversity. But things have changed horribly.

As I write this we are midway through season 7, and (get ready for this) in the first 3 episodes, nearly half the series, that entire cast of characters are totally white. How is it possible that a series that is set in the Caribbean can have no black characters for its first 3 episodes? What on earth are they thinking? The crimes explored have mainly become about the problems of a white elite that can afford to holiday, own multiple hotels, or lead poker tournaments on the island.

Now I may hear you say that the programme still has its diverse main cast. 3 out of the 4 are black and all non-British. However, the issue is now that the rich character development, tensions and cultural explorations that were dealt with through the main cast in the early series have all been gutted out. The main cast are as cardboard as possible, the black characters being now of mainly fairly low intelligence, only able to do desk work, and seemingly unsure of anything until the white detective amazingly explains it to them, and they are slowly becoming parodies.

We get to episode 4 of this series 7, and we do get to a black cast of characters. However, the major problem here, is that they are given stereotypical ‘black roles’. They are crazy Christian faith healers, and American pentecostal preachers. This is a major issue, as we go again towards the terrible idea that holds so much of our televisual output in this country: that only things about ‘race’ or about ‘black culture’ happen to people of colour, and everything else happens to white people.

The gender balance still remains high, with a mixture represented on screen, but a similar problem occurs here as with racial representation, let me give you an example. Florence Cassell, right hand woman to both D.I Goodman (of series 3-6) and D.I Mooney of the current series, has become so thin a character as to seemingly have no thoughts of her own. She is written to stand around, asking what is going on, and watching D.I Mooney do everything for her. Then in a recent episode she had the role of chasing a suspect and grabbing them, both of them falling into the water. This caused a spate of write ups calling patronisingly calling her an ‘action woman’. The co-detective before her, Camille Bordey, was a fully rounded, complex and fiery character, who actually did detection. Having a full character, Camille was never called out and lifted up for one specific thing that she did in an episode, but Florence is written so vaguely that when she does one thing (running once in an episode) she gets the patronising name of ‘action woman’, seemingly because she has done nothing else before that or since.

The classic duo – D.I Poole and D.S Camille Borday

All of this is down to bad writing. This show used to have a gorgeous set of character relationships, with the simple but brilliant premise of an Englishman forced to solve crimes in the sun, and everything that built from that culturally and racially was genius. But now any tension is totally lost. Those who take up the detective role at this point just enjoy being there. They don’t seem to suffer from any tensions apart from some food being too spicy, or a drink being odd, and everyone gets along. And if they don’t it’s because of some extremely base misunderstandings of each others cultures. Like for example in episode three of series 7 where poor Florence can’t possibly understand the idea of the ‘Desert Island Discs’ radio show: “Why would you be thinking about what music you are listening to, you need to survive if you are stuck on an island alone”– I mean please.

And the most tragic of all, for a detective series is the mysteries themselves. What used to be a wonderfully written show, with clear links to the great books of the past, without over stating, and using the best aspects of the genre in a new context were what made series 1 and 2 so wonderful to watch. Now the whole programme has the level of detective writing that you would expect to find in a do-it-yourself murder mystery box that you order for a birthday party.

The crimes used to link so well to the context built, and evolve naturally out of a situation (take the series masterpiece ‘Predicting Murder’, from series 1 as a perfect example), but now it seems that a writer has had a cool idea they want to get out and have then written a ridiculously convoluted and weak set up in which to show that idea off. Take for example, episode 2 of the current series 7 The Stakes are High, where there is seemingly no reason for the killer to create a highly complex and risky murder when they could have bumped off the victim at anytime they liked elsewhere. The ideas, context, motives and clues just don’t stack up, and nothing gels, leaving you covering your eyes in despair.

Take also episode 1 of series 7 Murder From Above, (penned by Robert Thorogood, the series creator, writer of some of the best episodes of the programme, and an actual authority on detective fiction and who therefore should know better.) This episode sees a woman commit suicide by jumping from the balcony of her room locked from the inside. But DI Moony thinks it’s murder. Why? Because the victim left the lid slightly off of her nail varnish and had only painted her thumb nail. How does he convince us as the audience that this small clue means murder? Well he just tells us that’s what it means of course! DI.Mooney (and I paraphrase here) points to the victims bed where there are some shirts folded up neatly and says “no, she would never have left the lid off of her nail varnish, look she is an extremely neat person, this doesn’t make sense.” This represents the worst kind of writing in detective fiction, where the writer simply tells us what things mean, and that they could have no possible other meaning or function – aside from the fact that a folded shirt on one occasion doesn’t make you a neat person, or a hotel maid could have folded them, or someone else etc etc etc.

But only her thumb nail had been painted!

I could go on and on but you get the point. It’s this kind of poor writing that was satirised in books like The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkely back in 1929!

“Don’t waste time on unessentials. Just tell the reader very loudly what he’s to think, and he’ll think it all right. You’ve got the technique perfectly, Why don’t you try your hand at it? It’s quite a paying game, you know.” (Poisoned Chocolates Case, Anthony Berkley, 1929)

Other than these murderous writing problems, the general dialogue and delivery is so wooden, full of ‘telling’ rather than ‘showing’, with endless stretching out of the most simple concepts that it is actually cringe inducing. I had to take breaks in watching the 3rd and 4th episode in particular because the writing was so poor. The actors (and there are some great ones in the series) fed this terrible dialogue, sound like they are reading their lines from cards next to the camera.

Why does this all frustrate me so much? Well I am of course a fan of detective fiction. When I see a chance that the form may get solid representation, with possible new takes on the genre, not to mention all the other great points about inclusion that this show can bring up, then it’s super exciting. But Death In Paradise now represents why many people think detective fiction is so poor, unintelligent, weak, unliterary and not worth their time. And for a programme that pulls in more viewers than ever (8.79 million for episode 1 of series 7), it’s a tragedy that this is what most people will believe detective fiction is.

It’s so sad to see something that once had such credibility in every area, become the most empty and conservative parody of itself. I implore any readers to go back and watch an episode from series 1 or 2 against this series, it’s like watching two entirely different shows. I want to say there is still a chance that it could pick up again. But unfortunately, I already know that it’s too late. At least I can go back to the days of D.I Pool and Camille Borday, but I know that we cannot have them back again.

After another hiatus, and 20 years since the first episode of Jonathan Creek aired on our screens we were treated to possibly the final Creek story ever, Daemon’s Roost.

The plot and main impossibility centre around a horrific mansion house (Daemon’s Roost) which, according to legend, was once owned by Sir Jacob Surtees. A seemingly satanic powered individual, complete with hidden chamber, Surtees has the ability to apparently levitate his victims across the room (no strings attached) sending them from a cage and through the air into a fiery furnace.

150 years later the mansion, now decaying was bought by corny slasher horror film director Nathan Clore, specifically for all it’s macabre history. But this decision turned to tragedy as two of his step daughters and their mother die under strange circumstances. Alison, the only daughter left, now grown up, is summoned to Daemon’s Roost to learn the truth about what happened to the rest of her family. But before she arrives Clore has a debilitating stroke rendering him paralysed and unable to communicate.

We are told that Creek had assisted Alison’s husband Stephen Belkin 6 years previously with what has come to be known as ‘The Striped Unicorn Affair’. A nifty locked room murder where by Stephen’s first wife, who had been receiving death threats, is finally told she will die in her bedroom that night. Stephen indeed wakes to find her lying dead, her bedside glass of water having been poisoned besides the fact that Stephen’s glass and the brand new bottle of water contain no poison, and the doors and windows are all securely locked from the inside. Alison, knowing Creek had solved the case calls him in to work out the truth behind her mother and sisters tragic deaths.

But after Creek’s arrival at Daemon’s Roost events take a more tragic and sinister turn, as the legend of Sir Jacob Surtees satanic killings is reenacted. Alison having been knocked out finds herself in the rumoured underground dungeon and is forced to watch Stephen levitated across the room and into the fire.

I felt the whole episode was something of a return to form for Renwick. The solution to the satanic levitation murder was satisfying and fiendishly simple, and the neat solution to the ‘Striped Unicorn Affair’, it’s subsequent subversion, and then it’s link to the motive and solution for the death at Daemon’s Roost lifts those plotting elements from good to brilliant. It’s this kind of thing that shows that Renwick has still got the flair to weave a complex mystery that has always made Creek so popular.

What I like about this episode, and with much of the Creek series as a whole is Renwick’s mixing of time periods in his impossible situations. Much of the problems over the Creek series blend both contemporary settings alongside the historic macabre. Objects like the thrice stolen 90’s answer phone tape in The Problem at Gallows Gate (1998), the clunky PC monitors of episodes like The House of Monkeys (1997) and the sharp glass shelf and modern book titles of the ‘Striped Unicorn Affair’ embed the mysteries in the moment, making them ‘of the time’. These writing tools serve to charge and activate the mundane and the everyday with mystery and horror. This is one of the great powers of the locked room mystery genre. Where simple locked rooms become sinister dark cages, glasses of water become fierce and sharp and something so simple as why a book would be too far forward on a shelf is imbued with twisted and cryptic meaning.

The Problem at Gallow’s Gate – Pure 90’s

These deeply domestic environments coupled with decaying haunted settings has been a Renwick tool of old. As with the moody Satan’s Chimney (2001), The Grinning Man (2009) and the series classic The Black Canary (1998). This coupling has the effect of butting up the contemporary alongside ghostly British histories in a way I have always admired.

But there were some holes and difficulties in Daemons Roost, mostly in terms of plotting and motivation. The no-consequence death of the returning ‘House of Monkeys’ killer was hard to swallow and was a very ‘convenient’ plot device. The more ‘phoney’ wordplay throughout the episode was a stretch, and there seemed to be a lot of padded out extra twists and turns that, although tied together by Renwick, could have been left behind. However with 32 episodes under his belt, it’s amazing that Renwick can pull ideas and solutions out of the bag.

In conclusion I felt this was a satisfying return to form for Renwick and Creek, with a few bumps along the way. And if this turns out to be the final episode, and Creek’s last bow, then it is a fitting ending to the whole 20 years of impossible mysteries. It makes me wonder if anything might ever take it’s place?